but I suspect Oliver James is talking shit. This seems to be all he ever goes on about.

I think rates of mental illness have a lot to do with diagnosis and awareness, whihc would account for differences between countries. It's a bit like when people say "we didn't have depression in the old days". They did, it was just called something different.

buy a lot of crap like magazines and pens, but usually can never decide what to buy if i have any money, so I do stupid stuff with it instead. Today, I am going to try and fill my bath with jelly, and hopefully my girlfriend will understand.

I can't see that either side if the argument is incorrect; certainly we live in a society by which status is dependent on what you own, earn etc. Equally, absolutely everybody seems to be convinced they have some sort of pyschological disorder.

They don't have to be exclusive strains of thought either; a therapy culture could be borne of a failure by many to achieve a high level of status in economic terms, an attempt to excuse their failure if you will. Similarly, consumer addiction could be a way of self-medicating for social anxieties.

It is competitiveness and over work that are the real issues, and I don't think anyone can argue that the countries mentioned have opened the door to both - they are all among the hardest working and most affluent of western societies.

The killer is that the affects trickle down onto those who do not necessarily wish to play along with the game. The pace of work (and the very fact that there should be pace at work) is set by the most strident and ambitious - often this is married to acquisitiveness.

Those who don't necessarily share these values must still keep up. To even question this is seen as heresy.

I used to spend too much money on clothes dvd's and other crap. I'm starting to realise that I never use some of the stuff I buy and a lot more gets used once or twice. I think I was happier when I had less.

I think I'm gonna get rid of all the crap I don't use. Anyone wanna buy a yamaha DD55?

What do people row about most? Money. What does money do? Buy you thinks to make you happy. What happens when you can't buy things that make you happy? YOu get sad. What is one aspect of sadness?Anger.

it just seems more and more people are turning to material possessions for happiness when its no real substitute and it never lasts.
i don't know if you could call people clinically depressed over it but i think society and individuals are becoming more and more isolated and fearful of others and i don't think that's a good thing.

of finding one cause of a problem and then assuming it to be the single cause of the problem.

I'm sure the problem he described contributes to depression in this country but is it the only factor? Definitely not.

If you actually work with depressed people and find out what they're problems are, there's a wide spectrum of causes (plus, of course, a far better understanding of mental health than there used to be) and to ascribe it to one cause in nonsenical in the extreme.

Not everyone can be Post Spice or David Beckham but people think that dressing like them and buying the same perfume as them somehow alleviates them from the fact that their lives and outcomes are 95% completely futile. Working in a 24hour petrol station with a Johnny Depp haircut and a broken marriage which couldn't match the pages of Hello really is the dark night of the soul

i think we live in a culture of excessive consumerism and it's not just buying more things, it's buying the newest things which is becoming more and more important. everything is so disposable these days and it's all about the "quick fix".

there's a book called not buying it where the writer decides to give up shopping for a year (bar basics and necessities). it looks at how identity is now constructed through consumerism rather than socially. it's really interesting.

Most of money is just spend on going out drinking etc.
I do buy lots of CD's, I don't see music as a material possesion though, it's a spiritual, emotional neccesity. Without it I don't think I could ever cope with everyday life.
I bet most of you don't see music as material.

Is the higher rate of mental illness in the Anglo-Saxon nations as compared to the Romance countries down to us buying more stuff, or more to do with rates of diagnosis and varying methods of treatment?

Thank you for bringing this particular article to my attention. Whilst I don't really agree with the argument put forward, there is an interesting underlying concept I shall have fun entertaining.

It occurs to me that study into human behavioural patterns and the manipulation thereof creates a rather interesting feedback loop. A loop in which both the behavioural patterns under study and the methods by which they are enhanced/manipulated change through every (presumably infinite) iteration.

With this in mind, rather than a greedy consumer society making us mentally ill. I'd propose that, as we advance our knowledge of 'what makes us tick' we become better at manipulating those ticks into a pattern that appeals to us. As that pattern develops, we become more or less resistant to changes in our 'ticking pattern' depending on whether or not the attempts to influence how we tick harmonise with how we're ticking now.

To solidify slightly, re-watch some adverts from the 80s on youtube, you're likely to exhibit a wry smile at some of the ideas that used to sell you things. It's not that people used to be stupid, or more easily led, it's that we're now ticking in a slightly different way through years of development (I shy away from the word manipulation due to its negative undertones - I don't necessarily believe this is a negative process).

As such, an individual, when exposed to a certain set of events (these don't necessarily have anything to do with consumerism, they could be members of the opposite sex, books, ideas, concepts, even this post) is changed in some way. Stronger, as individuals we attempt to change others, be it conciously or subconciously, and those attempts shape how people attempt to shape us... and around we go, lather, rinse, repeat as required.

Indeed, even the article itself is feeding back into who we are and how we respond. The mere suggestion that we, as a society, are sick will resonate in some way. The hapless author is thus left to either throw his hands up in despair that he's as much a part of 'the problem', or grin and accept that there is no problem at all - eventually that feedback loop is going to come back around and change everything anyway.

that we have panders and encourages all our weaknesses (it doesnt want to fight against our urges and excesses......as animals these urges and excesses are there to help us survive, when we become adept (though social structure developement and cultural developement) at surviving then the excess and non control of these causes problems, true human values or impetuses can be obscured by other control/consumerist systemic imperitives.

This is unhealthy.

The ideal consumer is not healthy, independant and satisfied with theirselves and their neighbours and family.....they MUST be disatisfied and unable to provide their own stuff (that was not hte original intention of systems, but that is what it has kind of become)